Sunday, October 9, 2011

Bodhi Linux 1.2.1 and other Updates

At little over a month ago the Bodhi team and I released our second update release. We were unaware at the time that the version of GCC used to compile the kernel on this release had an issue that caused an issue for some users when compiling and inserting extra kernel modules (such as the nvidia drivers and Virtual Box). This update release today contains a kernel in which this issue has been resolved.

If you already installed Bodhi 1.2.0 (or an earlier release) and your system is working fine (odds are it is, this issue was only affecting some users) there is no reason to install this new release. It is simply a bug fix release so the ISO image has the updated kernel by default.

You can find the new ISO image in high speed torrent download here or via direct download here.

Speaking of the nVidia driver - we know that jockey-gtk did not play nicely with Bodhi because we do not force kernel updates as Ubuntu does. Because of this we developed our own GUI tool that automates the installation of the current nVidia driver. You can find that here.

I would also like to publicly announce that our new browser based "App Center" is ready for use. While it may not look terribly different from the software page we had been using for the past several months, this new "App Center" has been written from scratch and no longer utilizes Doku Wiki. Currently the most notable new features are an RSS feed for new applications added and an "instant" search box.

We plan to add more features to the App Center in the future including user accounts that will integrate with our forums. While having an account on the App Center will be optional, it will eventually allow users to rate/comment on applications and most importantly it will allow them to save "App Sets" so that if they install Bodhi on another computer (or reinstall on the same one) they can easily re-download all their software with a single click.

19 comments:

Thanks for the fix!I know you may not like closed source stuff, but the best virtual client for me happens to be VmWare and I was wondering if you could do a screencast on how to install the .pl file in it's Tool folder so I could fully use your distro, thank you!

One issue that I have had with Bodhi 1.2 is that the Places gadget no longer works. I upgraded from 1.1 to 1.2 and then it stopped working. Did a fresh install of 1.2 on another machine and same problem. Adding the gadget just shows a box (the move/resize one) on the desktop but it can't be seen or used afterwards. Is there any fix? I'd appreciate any help.

Well, Bodhi seems to be what an operating system should be - aesthetically pleasing, responsive and stable. I alternate between Bodhi and Slackware as I compile most of the packages I use using the latter.

I think it likely Bodhi will gain further ground as the "Unity" malcontents decamp to other Ubuntu forks.

If you made it even easier i.e produced specific versions of Bodhi for different users: e.g. one tailored for artists and graphic designers, another for developers and programmers etc. With a .bod package to enable said functionality... Then you would certainly outflank rival forks!

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